Saar­brü­cken — The share­hol­ders of the Saar­brü­cken-based voice control specia­list SemVox have sold a majo­rity of their shares to the listed auto­mo­tive supplier para­gon. For EUR 16.4 million, para­gon is acqui­ring 82 percent of the shares in the company and has also agreed opti­ons for the remai­ning shares, which will initi­ally remain with the founders.

SemVox deve­lops effi­ci­ent and secure tech­no­lo­gies and solu­ti­ons for voice control, multi­face­ted human-tech­no­logy inter­ac­tion, and pro-active assis­tance systems based on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The company employs around 60 people and expects sales in the mid-single-digit million range for fiscal year 2018. The alre­ady profi­ta­ble company was foun­ded ten years ago as a spin-off of the German Rese­arch Center for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. In 2017, SemVox won the Car HMI Special Jury Award. Nume­rous vehicle types are alre­ady equip­ped with SemVox tech­no­logy, and this figure is expec­ted to rise to more than 13 million vehic­les in the next five years.

Thesellers of the shares are the four foun­ders of SemVox GmbH and four inves­tors. These include the German Rese­arch Center for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Saar­brü­cken, and M. Laden­dorf Betei­li­gung, Trier. The four foun­ders will conti­nue to be invol­ved in the company for a period of at least three years and will take on mana­ging or execu­tive func­tions. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted by the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2018 at the latest.

Listed on the Regu­la­ted Market (Prime Stan­dard) of Deut­sche Börse AG in Frank­furt a.M., para­gon GmbH & Co. KGaA deve­lops, produ­ces and sells pionee­ring solu­ti­ons in the fields of auto­mo­tive elec­tro­nics, body kine­ma­tics and elec­tro­mo­bi­lity. With the acqui­si­tion of SemVox, para­gon crea­tes a new busi­ness area for digi­tal assis­tance systems. Toge­ther, para­gon and SemVox want to signi­fi­cantly expand the range of inte­gra­tive solu­ti­ons. Para­gon is thus incre­asingly deve­lo­ping into a full-service provi­der for auto­mo­tive manufacturers.

Consul­tant SemVox: IMAP
Dr. Cars­ten Lehmann (photo, IMAP board member), Nils Keller and Atanas Petkov of IMAP exclu­si­vely advi­sed the sellers in all phases of the inves­tor process and supported them in successfully closing the tran­sac­tion within a few months.

About IMAP
Foun­ded in 1973, IMAP is one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and largest Mergers & Acqui­si­ti­ons orga­niza­ti­ons in the world with offices in 35 count­ries. More than 450 M&A advi­sors in inter­na­tio­nal sector teams specia­lize in corpo­rate sales, cross-border acqui­si­ti­ons and stra­te­gic finan­cing issues. Its clients are prima­rily family-owned compa­nies from the midmar­ket, but also include large natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons as well as finan­cial inves­tors, family offices and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. World­wide, IMAP accom­pa­nies about 200 tran­sac­tions per year with a total volume of more than USD 10 billion.